by John Saul
“I don’t need his help.” Ryan moved toward the stairs. “And I don’t need anybody trying to replace Dad, either.”
“He’s not trying to replace your father, Ryan,” Teri said, her voice quivering. “Nobody could.”
His mother’s words burning in his head, Ryan ran up the stairs to his room. Damn right no one could replace his father, and especially not Tom Kelly, who seemed to be at their house all the time now, trying to be nice.
As Ryan scooped his books off his desk and dumped them in his backpack, his eyes caught on the picture of his father that always sat right next to the desk lamp, and he paused.
Something in his father’s gaze seemed almost to be speaking to him. Grow up, his father seemed to be saying. You’re sixteen years old and you’re still sucking your milk from your bowl like a two-year-old. It’s time to be a man.
His backpack clutched in his right hand, Ryan stood perfectly still, feeling his father’s eyes boring into him.
Grow up. And be fair.
Be fair. The words his father had spoken more than any others. Ryan sighed, giving in to his father’s silent command. If he was going to be totally fair, Tom Kelly wasn’t really all that bad. In fact, he’d been a lot of help to his mother over the past six months. When the car had broken down, Tom had fixed it. When the roof had leaked, Tom had known who to call and made sure his mother didn’t get cheated. And when the basement had flooded, Tom had helped move things upstairs then helped clean the place up again, and never said a word about the fact that Ryan had managed to avoid speaking to him through the whole long day.
Still, nobody could replace his dad.
It had been two years since his father’s deployment and less than two years since an Iraqi roadside bomb had taken out the Humvee his father had been in. When he wasn’t actually looking at his father’s image, Ryan was finding it increasingly hard to remember exactly what his father’s face looked like. But right now he was staring at that image, and he could see very clearly exactly what Captain William James McIntyre was expecting from his son.
He sank down on his bed and thought about going to dinner with his mom and Tom Kelly.
His mom kept saying that her liking Tom Kelly had nothing to do with her love for his father, but Ryan was very certain that wasn’t quite true. And despite his own determination to keep his father’s place open in this house—in this family—his mother might just try to fill that place with someone else.
But what if it all turned out to be a horrible mistake? What if one of these days his father walked through the front door yelling, “Honey, I’m home!”
But then, as Ryan gazed at the portrait again, he remembered what his dad said to him the day he left for Iraq. “You’re the man of the house now, Ryan, so take good care of your mother. I’m not sure how long I’ll be gone, but I know this is going to be harder on her than it is for me. So you be there for her, okay?”
Ryan had nodded. They’d hugged. Then his father was gone.
But his words were still there in Ryan’s mind, as fresh as the day he’d spoken them. You be there for her.
His eyes shifting from his father’s image to the mirror over his bureau, Ryan stared at his own sullen reflection.
Not good enough, he told himself. Then he repeated his father’s words one more time. Be there for her. And be fair.
Grabbing his backpack, he ran down the stairs. His mother was still sitting at the kitchen table, cradling her coffee in both hands.
“I’ll be home by five-thirty,” Ryan said, and kissed her on the cheek.
The smile that came over her face told him that whatever he himself thought, he’d done exactly what his father would have wanted him to do. Kissing her one more time, just for good measure, he dashed out the front door just as the bus was pulling up to the stop at the corner. Okay, Dad, he thought. I did the right thing. Now make the bus driver wait for me!
But even as he broke into a run, he saw the bus doors close and watched helplessly as it pulled away.
The peeling walls of the second-floor classroom of Dickinson High School’s main building felt like they were closing in on Ryan, and directly behind him he could almost feel Frankie Alito trying to get a peek over his shoulder at the history test the class was working on. Ryan stiffened, knowing Alito was expecting him to slump just low enough at his desk to give the other boy a clear view of his answers, and as he thought about what Alito and his friends might do to him after school if he refused to let Frankie cheat, he felt himself starting to ease his body downward. But just before Alito could get a clear look, Ryan heard his father’s voice echoing in his head:
It’s time to be a man.
Instantly, Ryan sat straight up, determined that for once Alito could pass or fail on his own.
Then he felt the poke in his back. He ignored it, not shifting even a fraction of an inch in his seat.
Another poke with what felt like Alito’s pen, harder this time. Ryan kept his eyes focused on the test in front of him, but shrugged his shoulder away from Alito’s pen point.
“Gimme a look, geek,” Frankie whispered, punctuating the last word with another, harder jab.
“No way,” Ryan muttered, straightening even further in his chair and hunching over his paper, trying to stay out of Frankie’s reach. He glanced up at the teacher, but Mr. Thomas was busy at his desk, a stack of papers in front of him.
“Last chance,” Alito said, and Ryan felt another poke. But this time it was down low, just above his belt.
This time it wasn’t a pen point.
And this time his body reacted reflexively. Ryan twisted around just in time to see the flash of a blade.
The kind and size of blade that meant business.
“Now!” Alito hissed, jabbing the point of the knife hard enough to make Ryan jump.
Ryan yelped as the point dug into him and the teacher’s head snapped up.
“Something wrong, McIntyre?” Mr. Thomas asked from the front of the room.
Suddenly every eye in the classroom was on Ryan.
“No, sir,” Ryan said. “Sorry.”
Mr. Thomas stood up and came around his desk.
“Really,” Ryan said. “It wasn’t anything.”
The teacher advanced down the aisle, his eyes never leaving Frankie Alito, and came to a stop next to Ryan.
“Really, it was nothing, Mr. Thomas,” Ryan said, praying that Alito had at least been smart enough to slip the knife back in his pocket.
“Both hands on your desk, Alito,” Thomas commanded. Ryan kept facing directly forward, not wanting to see what was going to happen next.
“What’s that?” He heard Mr. Thomas ask.
“Nuthin’,” Alito answered.
“Hand it over,” the teacher said.
Ryan could almost see Frankie Alito glowering, but then the teacher spoke one more word, snapping it out with enough force that Ryan jumped.
“Now!”
The tension in the classroom grew as Alito hesitated, but when Mr. Thomas’s gaze never wavered, he finally broke and passed the switchblade to him.
“Thank you,” Thomas said softly. “And now you will go down to the office, where you will wait for me. I’ll be there at the end of the period, and you will be out of school for the rest of the year, even if we decide not to press charges, which I can assure you we won’t. You’re through, Alito.”
His face twisted with fury, Frankie Alito got to his feet, jabbing an elbow hard into Ryan’s shoulder.
“I saw that, too,” Mr. Thomas said. “You’re only making it worse.”
Alito shrugged and walked to the door, then paused before opening it. He turned his eyes, boring into Ryan, and then he smiled.
It was a smile that sank like a dart into Ryan’s belly.
“Okay. Show’s over,” Mr. Thomas said, breaking the uneasy silence that had fallen over the room. “Back to your tests. You have only ten minutes left.”
But for Ryan, the test was already over. He sta
red at the questions that still remained, reading them over and over again, but no matter how many times he read the words, he couldn’t make sense of them.
It wasn’t enough that he had to worry about his mother and Tom Kelly. Now he had to face Frankie Alito and his friends, who would no doubt jump him when he was on the way home after school.
He turned his head and looked out the window. In the distance, he could see the skyline of Boston, and though he was pretty sure it wasn’t really possible, he thought he could even pick out the spire on top of St. Isaac’s School.
The school his mother had talked about the last time he’d come home with a black eye after a run-in with Frankie Alito.
Except he was pretty sure it hadn’t been his mother’s idea at all. In fact, he’d have been willing to bet it had been Tom Kelly’s idea.
But now, as he stared at his unfinished test, and knew all he had to look forward to for the rest of the day was Frankie Alito’s fury, he began to wonder.
Surely St. Isaac’s couldn’t be any worse than where he was.
“Time’s up,” said Mr. Thomas.
CHAPTER 2
BROTHER FRANCIS STOOD in the doorway of the vast dining room at St. Isaac’s Preparatory Academy, scanning the tables of students, searching for Kip Adamson. At least half the school’s two hundred students were sitting at the long tables eating, talking, and laughing, yet despite the noise they were generating, the chamber was still far quieter than had been the much smaller cafeteria at the school Brother Francis had left only last fall. Indeed, it seemed to him as if the old stone building housing the dining hall was somehow offended by the noise, and, rather than tolerate such frivolity within its walls, had somehow found a way to absorb the noise the school’s students made, muting it almost as quickly as the students generated it.
Though he was new to St. Isaac’s, Brother Francis had a knack for attaching names to faces, and now he was able to greet nearly every one of the students by name as he walked between tables in search of one particular face. Kip Adamson, though, was nowhere to be seen; he’d already missed his senior math class, and Sister Mary David had sent Brother Francis to find out why. Sister Mary David’s wrath was legendary; not only would nobody willingly miss her class without an ironclad excuse, but she wouldn’t hesitate to vent her fury upon Brother Francis, should he prove unable to explain young Adamson’s absence.
Kip must have had a good reason—at least, he’d better have had a good reason.
In the far corner of the dining hall, Brother Francis spotted Clay Matthews, Kip’s roommate, sitting with his usual group of friends. As Brother Francis approached, he caught a glimpse of playing cards, and suddenly knew why they were all knotted up in the corner together.
“Hey, Brother Francis,” Tim Kennedy said loudly enough that the young cleric was sure it was meant as a warning to Tim’s friends rather than a greeting to himself. Sure enough, the other boys’ heads snapped up the instant Tim spoke.
Brother Francis put on his sternest face. “I believe you’re all aware that gambling is against the rules,” he said. The boys glanced at each other uneasily. “Think what would have happened if it had been Sister Mary David who caught you instead of me.”
As the rest of the boys paled slightly, José Alvarez did his best to look utterly innocent. “Gambling?” he asked, as if Brother Francis had spoken in some exotic language he didn’t quite understand.
“We’re just playing Crazy Eights,” Darren Bender said.
“I see.” Brother Francis held his hand out for the cards. Clay Matthews groaned, squared the cards into a deck and surrendered them to Brother Francis, who slipped them into one of the deep pockets in his cassock. “Have any of you seen Kip?” he went on. “He missed his math class.”
The boys shook their heads. “He might still be in bed,” Clay said. “I don’t think he’s been feeling good.”
Brother Francis frowned, his lips pursing. “Oh? Did he go to the infirmary?”
Clay shrugged. “It wasn’t like he was sick with the flu or anything. He’s just been acting kind of strange for a while.”
“Strange how?” Brother Francis asked, though he was fairly sure that whatever answer he got wouldn’t be particularly enlightening. Sure enough, Clay only shrugged again. “Okay,” Brother Francis sighed. “I’ll check around. Meanwhile, if you see him, have him come to my office.”
Leaving the dining hall, Brother Francis began making his way through the maze of hallways and short flights of steps that connected all the various buildings into which the school had spread over the century it had been on Beacon Hill. Even after eight months, Brother Francis was still finding areas he couldn’t remember ever seeing before. There were offices and classrooms spread through dozens of buildings, not to mention the dormitories for the students and the residences of the staff. The students all seemed to know the sprawling old buildings better than he did, and had found shortcuts he knew nothing about. Still, now he was at least able to find his way from the dining room to the boys’ dorm without getting lost.
At least not too lost.
He knocked on the door of room 231, but there was no answer. “Kip?” he asked, then knocked again before turning the knob and entering.
The room was kept as neatly as the school demanded, with both beds made. The items on the desks were orderly, the closet doors were closed, and the dresser top clear.
But no sign of Kip; no clue at all as to his whereabouts.
Brother Francis used his cell phone to call the infirmary, rather than walking all the way over to the other side of the school, but the nun on duty told him that Kip hadn’t been there, either.
As he pocketed the phone, worry began to gnaw at his gut.
He moved to the window, looking down over Beacon Hill. From where he stood the view was unobstructed all the way to the Charles River, and Cambridge beyond. Idly, he wondered what the Puritan founders of the city would think about a Catholic school sitting atop their finest hill, the gothic architecture and spires of the school’s original building towering over the lower structures that some of those Puritans had built themselves.
Turning away from the view beyond the school, Brother Francis glanced once more around the room, but nothing had changed.
Kip had not miraculously reappeared.
Not that Brother Francis had really expected him to, given that the student population of the school had a disproportionate number of high-risk kids, one of whom was none other than Kip Adamson.
The odds were that Kip had just taken off. Brother Francis had been warned that it happened; indeed it had happened once before this very school year.
But it still bothered him. Silently he offered up a prayer to Saint Aloysius Gonzaga, on the chance the patron saint of teenagers might have a spare moment for Kip Adamson, wherever he was. The prayer sent heavenward, Brother Francis started back through the narrow, winding hallways. His heavy crucifix swung from the belt on his cassock, and despite the constant chill that the cold stone walls seemed to cast over the school, perspiration began to bead on his forehead.
Wherever he was, Brother Francis’s intuition was telling him, Kip Adamson wasn’t anywhere within the complex of buildings that made up the school.
But worse, Brother Francis’s intuition was also telling him that there was going to be an ugly outcome to this whole situation.
A very ugly outcome.
CHAPTER 3
RYAN MCINTYRE CHECKED OVER his test one last time, put his pen away, and glanced up at the clock above Mr. Thomas’s desk: two minutes to four. He’d finished the test with time to spare, and he was all but certain he’d aced it. Slinging his backpack over his shoulders, he picked up the finished test and laid it in front of the teacher. “Thanks for letting me do this,” he said. “I know I should have been able to—”
“Forget it,” Mr. Thomas cut in, picking up a red pencil as he began scanning Ryan’s test. “Nobody needs a knife poking them in the back while they’re taking
a test.” He glanced up from the pages in front of him. “How’re you getting home?”
“Same way as always,” Ryan sighed. “The bus.” He saw a flicker of uncertainty in the teacher’s eyes, and knew exactly what he was thinking about. The same thing Ryan had been thinking about all day, or at least since lunch time.
Frankie Alito coming after him as soon as he left school.
It had started at noon, when a hush had fallen over the cafeteria the moment he’d walked in. It had taken him a minute or so to realize that nearly every eye in the room was on him, but he’d done his best to ignore it while he filled his tray with food and found a seat next to Josh Singer. “What’s going on?” he asked. “How come everyone’s staring at me?”
“Frankie Alito got expelled, just like Mr. Thomas said he would,” Josh told him. “And everybody thinks you’re either a hero or the dumbest guy on the planet.”
Ryan had kept his eyes focused on his food, but he knew he wouldn’t be able to eat.
“I’ll be okay,” he now said to Mr. Thomas. “See you Monday.” Turning away, he left the room before the teacher could say anything else.
The halls were quiet and empty of students and the only sound other than his own footsteps echoing down the long corridor was the shouting coming from the gym, where the cheerleading team was practicing.
Maybe he should just stay here, where at least he was safe. After all, they’d probably grab him when he got off the bus near his house.
But then, as he realized it was an hour later than the usual time he left school, he had an idea. Maybe there was a way not to get beaten up, at least not today.
Ryan stopped at his locker on the second floor long enough to leave his history book and pick up his jacket, then pulled out his cell phone as he started once more down the corridor. He pressed the speed dial key to ask his mother to pick him up.
But all he got was her voice mail.
“Hi, Mom,” he said to the machine. “I stayed after school to make up a test. I was hoping you could pick me up, but I guess you’re doing something. See you when I get there.”